Now is the time to speak that divine utterance: 'We give thanks to Thee, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that, having united Thyself to us and manifested Thyself to us through Thyself, and having manifested Thyself to us through Thyself, Thou hast hidden this from the wise and understanding' — who are wise in their own eyes and knowing in their own sight. Wherefore also, when they hear Thy saints speaking, some of their sayings they reject, others they misinterpret, and there are even some which they dare to falsify, thinking that they will escape everyone's notice.
...the vision of God revealed to those who have been purified. And after saying that it would indeed be possible for the wise of this age also to comprehend God from the harmonious order of the world, he adds: 'But the great genius of this beatitude seems to me to point to something else' — yet they themselves plainly assert the very thing that did not seem so to him.
Now the great Dionysius the Areopagite, asking how we know God, who is neither intelligible nor sensible, adds — though in a questioning manner — 'is it perhaps true to say that we know him not from his own nature, but from the ordering of beings?' And then, having also unveiled to us the most divine knowledge, accomplished according to the supernatural union with the light beyond splendor, in a manner beyond mind and knowledge, they have left aside that knowledge beyond mind as though it were nothing, and have deemed that questioning utterance unworthy of any inquiry, as though it were added in vain; instead they put forward the saint's statement stripped of the most crucial elements on both sides, as though it asserted that God is known from created things alone.
'For since,' he says, 'every man has sense-perception and mind, the natural cognitive faculties, how shall we, by means of these, come to know God, who is neither sensible nor intelligible?'
Certainly from nowhere else than from beings, sensible and intelligible; for indeed our knowledges, being knowledges of beings and having their limit in beings, also show forth the divine from this very source.
But those who possess not only faculties of sense-perception and intellection, but who have also been allotted the spiritual and supra-natural grace, shall know God — who is Spirit — no longer from beings alone, but also spiritually, beyond sense and mind, becoming wholly God's and knowing God in God.
According to this knowledge, then, divine things are to be understood, as the same saint exhorts — not according to ourselves, but by standing wholly outside our whole selves and becoming wholly God's; for it is better to belong to God than to oneself. For thus divine things will be given to those who have come to be with God.
Do you see how he has led us away from seeking to know God from beings, having unveiled another, supernatural and divine and spiritual knowledge, which comes to us after the setting-aside of beings, according to the union beyond mind? And having said that it is according to this that divine things become given, and that it is according to this that it is right to understand divine things — that is, spiritually and not according to ourselves — nor by gathering the knowledge of God from beings through sense-perception and mind?
1:1769
Ἀτελήςγάρἡγνῶσιςαὕτηκαίἀτελέσιπρέπουσαφρονήμασιν
因為這種知識是不完全的，只配得上不完全的心思。
For this knowledge is imperfect, and befitting imperfect minds.
But indeed, what does the saint mean by the 'perhaps' attached to the knowledge of the divine that comes from beings and according to ourselves — the word which the philosopher has overlooked as superfluous?
Since indeed with sensible eyes and sensible ears we have ineffably seen light and heard the voice of God, for this reason he judged that one should be cautious of declaring absolutely
that God is known from created things alone, and by these cognitive and merely human faculties alone — this he judged one ought to be wary of asserting.
And indeed, to those able to attain, through precise attention to those very words of the saint, it is clear that there too he is teaching only the introductory knowledge of God as arising from the knowledge of beings; wherefore he added: 'from this, we ascend, according to our power, by way and by order, to that which is beyond all things.'
For this reason also, before the Law, this knowledge was suitable for those who were still as infants with regard to the knowledge of God; and Abraham is said to have received the beginning of the knowledge of God from this source, but afterward he no longer conversed with and knew God from it.
...theologies. But just as, again, there are those who have been granted a clear theology beyond the more perfect stages and veils, so too there are those who have peered even into the invisible things of God, as did Moses and Paul and those like them — even though, fittingly, they lead us by the hand from the things seen by us toward the understanding of those invisible things.
What then, O philosopher, do those manifold and crooked sophistries of your ill art mean to you — that whoever knows some one thing, and is, and is a beginning, and has power, must know 'that it is,' 'what it is,' 'the one,' 'the beginning,' and 'the power'?
For if someone were to say that God is in no way known from beings, you would rightly bring forward these things which belong to every rational nature; but since we set the
knowledge, which comes through the Spirit, of the mysteries of the Spirit, above the knowledge that naturally and commonly belongs to all, of what use will it be to you, who argue against this, to point out that the most introductory knowledge of God arises from beings?
Yet you are accustomed to argue in this way: since spiritual men say that there is a light contemplated by the mind, not knowledge alone, you, through many arguments, seek to show that what is called 'light' means knowledge, and by this you suppose that you win decisively in your opposition.
'But without this introductory knowledge,' he says, 'no one will even be rational, nor will there be any progress of rational beings toward the more perfect things.'
For indeed the rational faculty of the soul is truly diseased in one who considers his own reasoning more trustworthy than the oracles of the Spirit, and who does not think the divine commandments to be a great and perfect remedy of the soul.
For formerly he used to say that these commandments could purify the soul only by half; but now, having taken away entirely their capacity to purify, he has assigned it to knowledge, saying that the beginning, middle, and end both of the knowledge of God and of the soul's health and purification arise from knowing much, and more, and all things, and that one must in no way remain ignorant of the many, so that we may also be able to gather them into some universal whole and rightly attain the cyclical knowledge concerning beings — that is, to learn the encyclical education — so that we may also be deemed worthy of the angel-like intellections, the unified and partless ones; just as if someone were to say that one who wishes to see the point
which is partless, must first make it many-parted; and that the monad cannot come to be by subtracting the many, but only by combining them — although everything that results from combination is one yet divisible, whereas in that case what underlies it is the unified and partless.
But I, having been initiated by the Fathers, and having also myself heard from some of them and believed, know that they beheld these many things, and this whole sensible world, not by sense-perception, nor by reasoning, but by the very power and grace proper to the God-like mind — a power which also brings distant things as though before the eyes, and presents future things, in a manner beyond nature, as though present.
As for the God-speaking one of the Areopagus, it is no wonder that he too praises the Creator of nature from the things naturally present within us, since it is he alone who is glorified through things without soul, and things without sense, and things without reason, and rational things alike; yet to him alone, in a special and pre-eminent way, belongs worship in the Spirit, which alone God himself declared to be desired by God.
Of the sayings of the great Dionysius which the philosopher, without noticing, has adduced against himself, leaving aside the many that still remain, I shall mention one, the last.
He says, then, in the first book of the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy: 'This is the end common to every hierarchy — the attentive love toward God and divine things, performed divinely and in a unified manner, and, prior to this, the complete and irreversible departure from things opposed to it; the knowledge of beings as they are beings; the vision and understanding of sacred truth; the divinely-inspired participation in unifying perfection.'
From these, then, the philosopher argues thus: 'Of the things given to us by God, hierarchy is the mightiest; and the end of this, as this saying teaches, is the knowledge of beings; therefore, of the things in us, the best is the knowledge of beings — which is to say, the same thing as philosophy.'
For this is what the saint says: that the true knowledge of beings is the complete departure from things opposed to it, that is, the abstention from and non-performance of evils, which exists prior to the sacred activity — the divinely-inspired and unified activity.
For since even the one who is captured by wicked desires and led by them longs for what seem to him to be good things, and through his deeds shows that he is ignorant of the good that truly is; and the one mastered by anger fights against him who opposes what seem to him to be good and noble things; and, simply put, everyone who clings to the worse life is attached to it because it seems better to him, but not because it truly is so — only the one who has departed from worse things, having cast off this false opinion, comes ever more to regard the things that are truly worse as worse, and possesses the true knowledge of beings — the knowledge of what actually is, not of what merely seems to be. For this reason, the departure from evils is the knowledge of beings as they are beings, existing prior to the sacred activity, the divinely-inspired and unified activity. And the sacred, unified, and divinely-inspired activity is the keeping of the commandments of God, accomplished through flight from evils and through the persistent and attentive love of God and of divine things.
'This, then,' he says, 'is the end common to every hierarchy: to hate the things opposed to the commandments of God, and to love these commandments and the God who gave them, and, on account of love toward him, to live under them.'
This is the knowledge of beings as they are beings; this is the vision of truth; this is the participation in perfection; this is the feast of spiritual contemplation, which, being revealed according to the promise, illumines and deifies and nourishes noetically everyone who, through a pure heart, dwells within it noetically — or rather, spiritually.
This he himself also makes clear, saying as follows: for, having advanced the discourse a little, and then resuming it, becoming himself the interpreter of his own words, on account of those who are unwilling to understand divine things divinely, but who instead undertake to twist them toward their own false opinions
he says: 'It has, then, been said by us in a sacred manner that this is the aim of our hierarchy — our assimilation to and union with God, so far as attainable; and this, as the divine oracles teach, we shall attain only through love for the divine commandments and sacred acts. For, he says, "he who loves me will keep my words, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him."'
1:1803
Ὁρᾷςποίανλέγειγνῶσιντῶνὄντωνἀληθῆ;
你看他所說的、對萬有真實的知識是指什麼呢？
Do you see what he calls the true knowledge of beings?
1:1804
ἩπρόςΘεόνἕνωσίςτεκαίἀφομοίωσις
那便是與神的合一以及相似。
It is union with, and assimilation to, God.
1:1805
Πῶςδέἐκεῖἀγάπηνεἶπεταύτηντήνἀφομοίωσιν;
但他在那裡為何把這種相似稱為『愛』呢？
But why did he there call this assimilation 'love'?
And by 'divinely and unifiedly,' and by 'the sacred activity,' he obliquely signified the keeping of the divine commandments — the disposition that comes about solely on account of God and divine things; for the good is not good unless it is done for the sake of the good alone. And the continual departure from things opposed to God, and the knowledge of beings, and the sacred vision and understanding of truth, present the hatred toward the evil passions, and the condemnation of sin, and the irreversible flight from it; while by the unified perfection and the divinely-inspired participation in the One, and by the contemplation that noetically nourishes and deifies, he indicated the divine visitation and indwelling that comes according to the promise — an indwelling which perfects that spiritual eye through union, and nourishes it through contemplation.
If, then, true knowledge, and union with and likeness to God, come about solely through the keeping of the commandments, then what the philosopher calls 'knowledge' is a false knowledge.
of the principles of beings, but rather from knowing all things and striving eagerly to learn everything that anyone professes to know, whether Greek or Egyptian, so that, he says, being deficient in nothing that has been said and known concerning the nature of the cosmos, one might not, from that deficiency, remain ignorant of God — since, according to him too, God is known from beings alone. In this he does something similar to one who, having heard that the body is nourished and sustained from food alone, would say that anyone who desires to live must be lacking in none of the foods, and must not cease eating day after day and hour after hour — and would thus persuade people to regard the useless madness for extravagant tables, and the passion of gluttony, as most necessary for human life, while they desire none of the better things.
For thus also God set the principles of nature as matter for the discursive faculty of the soul — but as things able to lead it by the hand toward the higher knowledge.
We, then, receiving from these what suffices, leave aside what is superfluous for those who cannot yet take in the more perfect food; and if, though beyond the proper age, these are unwilling to withdraw from the food suited to infants, we anoint, as it were, a bit of Scylla upon this all-worldly breast, moderately pointing out on occasion that it is not very profitable, so as to wean them from untimely food.
But they, no longer as children, but as ones perfected in wickedness, rise up against us, and contend rather to drag us down than to run back up themselves to the fitting measure.
Wherefore they also say that the Son, together with the Father, comes and makes his dwelling in him who knows the principles of the nature of the world; for such a one, they say, knows the truth.
But God is the truth, and the Father of truth; and moreover everything that knows is grounded and abides in the thing known; therefore, the one who possesses the knowledge of beings will be permanently established in God;
and since this one has an unchangeable abode in God, it is not unreasonable that the Other should be said to come to him and to have made his dwelling there. 'This,' he says, 'is also the one who possesses a mind filled with divine and noetic light.'
1:1817
Αὕτηἐστίνἡτελεωτάτητοῦφιλοσόφουθεογνωσία
這便是那位哲學家最為完備的神之知識。
This is the philosopher's most perfect knowledge of God.
If, then, according to the philosopher's arguments, the knowing is fixed in and abides in the known, and therefore according to him the one who has knowledge of beings is in God and God is in him, then falsehood too, and the father of falsehood, has made his abode in him, and this same man is thus also the one who possesses a soul filled with noetic darkness; and truly great darkness overshadows the soul that puts forth such thoughts.
And yet Christ in the Gospels says that his and the Father's indwelling comes about from the keeping of the commandments, and manifestation comes from the indwelling.
But this man, inverting that teaching, says that indwelling comes from what seems to him to be manifestation, and, clearly to the contrary, says that manifestation comes not from the commandments but from knowledge — and a knowledge which he earlier declared to come about in no way from the keeping of the divine commandments.
But since the same faculty perceives contrary things, tell me, O philosopher, when indeed are you warm: when your body is disposed according to this very quality, or when, your body being chilled, you merely know the contrary quality — warmth — only in your mind?
Then, therefore, you will truly have God within yourself, when you have the divine disposition within yourself according to soul; and the truly divine disposition is love toward God; and this comes about only through the sacred labor of the divine commandments — for even if it is their beginning, it is also their middle and their summit. For God is love, who has promised his own coming and abiding and manifestation in this alone.
Then, therefore, you will truly make use of yourself for the correction of others, when you shall have acquired such a disposition from such things; for now, playing the role of one who corrects, you are plainly perverting and disparaging instead.
A clear proof of your eagerness to disparage under the guise of correction is that you took the greatest pains to prevent these writings — which you suppose are directed toward our correction — from ever coming into our sight, just as if some physician were to claim he had prepared a most beneficial draught for the sick man, yet altogether forbade him to use it.
Whence indeed this too has surely become evident — that you yourself already knew beforehand what has now been exposed: that these so-called remedies possess the power of poisons; and this, then, you knew in advance — that you would not escape detection in your theft, once these had come to light before us.
hands — these your writings — in which, concluding, you say that it is blameless for you to make use, for correction, of things which some friend of yours has not spoken rightly concerning the knowledge of God. And this is what you say was not rightly spoken by your friend: "Those who are purified in heart know, through the sacred illumination that comes to be in them, that God exists and is, as it were, light — or rather, a fountain of noetic and immaterial light; but those who have not ascended to this contemplation perceive the common Provider from his providence over all things, the Good-itself from the things made good, the Life-itself from the things made alive, and, simply, from all things, him who is all things and is established above all things."
But I know that on another occasion too he was ill-disposed toward this statement; for, having misunderstood that the "as it were" was attached to "light" by way of comparison, he used to say that we were asserting that we know God — asserting what sort of light he is.
But when we pointed out that "fountain of light" was placed alongside it, and read the two together as "God exists, as it were, as a fountain of light," we asked him what, then, the "as it were" was meant to signify here; and he, unwillingly, confessed his ignorance and asked pardon; for indeed it is not possible for it to be taken in any other sense than "as though."
But now he has seized upon it in another way; for, he says, since it is evident that even by the most contemplative, God is known only from the things that are, the knowledge of God here handed down through noetic illumination, being other than that derived from the things that are, is by no means true.
We must reply to this that, since it has been made evident by very many of the things said above, God is known not from beings alone, but also from the things that, by transcendence, are not beings — that is, the uncreated things — and moreover through an eternal light that is established above all beings, now given, in the manner of a pledge, to those who are worthy, and in the unending age illumining them round about unendingly, of necessity
For we set it above all the things that exist otherwise; but that it should be, for God, among the things according to him — this is nowhere attached to our statement.
You would find that the theologians set not only this but also many other contemplations far above the knowledge of God derived from created things, and that they distinguish this one from all the others and hold it exceptionally worthy of divine titles, as the sole deifying manifestation of God.
But it is necessary for us now to put an end to the discourse, since it has already stretched out to great length, reserving for what follows the task of refuting the ignorance of the philosopher's discourses On Knowledge.
REFUTATION OF THE ABSURDITIES ARISING FROM THE SECOND WRITINGS OF THE PHILOSOPHER BARLAAM, OR CONCERNING DEIFICATION. But if the book has indeed been composed Against the Messalians, just as it is even entitled, what has come over him, that he sets forth the words of our divine fathers mixed together with the false doctrines of those Messalians, and then flows on at great length against them, abandoning the things that pertain to the Messalians themselves?
But if he has determined that it is necessary to wage war against the saints of every age and against us who choose to confess in agreement with them, what then do the appellations "Messalians" and "Blachernites" and the like mean?
Or is it not plain that such things are but stage-scenery and a mask — manifold and varied, or rather of every sort — bearing with them deception toward the many and outrage toward all, so that we should all be outraged, and in many ways: the fathers who were born of men, together with those who detected the deceit and were not persuaded, outraged both by being classed together with the heretics and by the subsequent refutation of them through arguments, and by the shameless and terrible drunken invectives interspersed among what pass for these refutations; while as many as, having been led astray, should be persuaded, of necessity suffer one of two things — either being now, or having previously been, shown plainly to be among the deceived, outraged by having become manifest as such, considering that those now recognized as holding false doctrine were formerly held by them in reverence; and, simply put, so that thus all of us, and virtually everything sacred and solemn belonging to us, should be made to appear as laughter, and mockery, and a plaything?
he insolently outrages, alas, the things that are awesome and venerable — why, then, do not all of us turn away from him, or rather, turn him back from so great an evil with fitting vehemence?
But he himself is so far from daring to say such things openly that, even at the beginning of his discourse, he not only professes that he will introduce no innovation, but also that he will contend on behalf of the Church of God, displaying a zeal befitting a philosopher against those nurtured in perverse doctrines — whence he has even given some the suspicion that he is making some account of the truth, and this while, under a pretense directed toward the heterodox, he is in fact contending against those who live piously.
...the traditions that have prevailed in it, and the writings of the saints — on behalf of which we are ready to offer not only such words as we are able, but besides these, also, should it be necessary, our very souls; and for these words and for this purpose we seek reward neither from men — the only reward they have to give in such matters being praise, and indeed we do not even look to this — nor from God; for a reward is not owed to those who render only what they owe.
Having, however, long since abandoned the cultivation and ambition concerning fine rhetoric, I write in no way as though I were composing these with studied art, nor rendering the book a rose-garden
or a lyre, or a trumpet — sounding forth, as the one, something clear and resonant, or, as the other, blending, through a well-ordered composition and a shifting of figures of speech, by means of the varied strokes of tone, a single melodious harmony, and through it all beautifying the discourse.
For Attic graces, and the beauty of words, and balanced clauses, adorn, like flowers, the meadow of discourse; and if I should be unable to make use of these, even though by nature inclined to desire fine speech, this too would be a clear proof that we have come to speaking out of necessity, and not for the sake of display.
As for the thought laid up within the words, this I would call the first beauty — namely, that the soul, so far as it is able, should look toward God and the truth; for from that source come to it, thereafter, all other beauties, even if there should be something else more venerable than this in some other respect.
But I think it fitting, before the particular refutations, to make this clear: for what reason did this man take such very great pains to declare the deifying grace of the Spirit to be created, having set this very task for himself as the subject-matter of his writing — even though he himself, too, though not willingly, has agreed that this grace has been called by the saints "divinity" and "divinity-in-itself" and "divine principality"?
For what reason, then, is he himself unwilling to be persuaded to say that the grace of the Spirit is uncreated, and declares those who are so persuaded to be impious, and leaves no stone unturned, as the saying goes, to show to everyone that it is created — calling it a natural imitation, and a determinate disposition of rational nature, one that is seen by sense, by whatever sense that may be?
He is doing a favor to his fellow-tribesmen, the Latins, to whatever extent he has power, deceitfully and, at the same time, forcibly, dragging us down toward their way of thinking.
For when we hear that the Spirit is given from the Son and poured out upon us through the Son, and then also hear the great Basil saying, "God poured out upon us the Spirit richly through
his own Son richly poured out the Spirit upon us" — "poured out," not "created"; "granted as grace," not "fashioned"; "gave," not "made" — and if we should be persuaded that the grace is created, what shall we say is being given, and granted, and poured out through the Son?
Is it not that very reality which works the grace — if indeed we should say that that alone is without beginning, but that every energy of it is created, just as this new theologian maintains?
Is not this, then, precisely and directly the mindset of the Latins — on account of which they have been driven out from the precincts of our Church — namely, that it is not the grace, but the Holy Spirit itself, that is sent even from the Son and poured out through the Son?
And why should he not have hastened by every means toward this, and set every device in motion, and assailed us with elaborate contrivance, since — plainly — last year, when he had been sent as ambassador by our most divine emperor to Italy and the regions of Gaul beyond, as spring was advancing, in order to rouse them against the Persians, he himself, forgetting the very purpose of the embassy, as later became evident from his deeds, instead went over to the Pope, and, having declared along the way that the Pope's prayers — which, as he himself says, the Pope had offered up over him — had proved salvific for him, then, having pressed his lips and his knee to the Pope, as it seems, with pleasure and reverence, in an embrace, and having placed his head beneath the Pope's hands, joyfully received the seal from there?